Murray Bridge Poem by Francis Duggan

An old Town in the brown country seven hundred miles away
Long before the colonizers came I heard an old man say
That the black tribes used to live there and there they fished and hunted every day
But the changes quickly happened when the white race came to stay.

To Murray Bridge in South Australia the Seasons come and go
An old Town in the dry country where the mighty Murray flow
Through the undulating paddocks babbling downhill to the sea
In a land of rugged beauty with a proud black history.

I can hear the welcome swallows chirping in the sunny skies
O'er the bare and brown high country every time I visualize
In a land as old as time itself where in the evening breeze
The magpies and the butcherbirds pipe on the scrubland trees.

Where the black tribes fished and hunted long before the British came
And such wild and rugged beauty man could never hope to tame
And where even the tallest gum tree to a great height does not grow
In Murray Bridge in South Australia where the mighty Murray flow.